Nogami na ziemi. Rola ciała w etnografii przedtekstowej
Feet on the Ground: The Role of the Body in Pretextual Ethnography

Summary/Abstract: In this article Dalsgård reflects upon moments of pretextual experience in fieldwork, comparing them with the philosophical notion of the epoché and discussing the methodological problems hereof on a theoretical level. She also proposes a way of working with aspects of this challenge with anthropology students as part of preparation for fieldwork. Dalsgård argues that to be aware of pretextual data, anthropologists need first to understand, by way of direct experience, what it means to be a body. Like the theatre actor, an anthropologist at fieldwork draws on her own body as her primary tool, but unlike the actor, the anthropologist often has not trained her bodily awareness. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty and contemporary phenomenologists (Zahavi, Depraz), as well as anthropologists like Michael Jackson and Robert Desjarlais, Dalsgård develops an argument in line with some of the most recent literature on creativity and design processes. Along the way she draws on her own experiences from playing in theatre and from her fieldwork in the north-east of Brazil.

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